Some books are perfect for drawing connections between multiple subjects. The book Hill of Fire becomes the hub for three very different, yet related activity ideas. First the class hones their oral language skills by creating an...

In this science worksheet, students follow directions for dissecting a flower. Students tape the parts of the flower in the corresponding boxes. Students also read about how flowers reproduce and analyze a related diagram.

"The Pied Piper of Hamelin" is the focus of a instructional activity designed to shed light on the importance of keeping promises. As a class, scholars take part in a discussion on the topic of honesty and consequences. Independent...

Introduce beginning readers to cause and effect in a story by exploring it together. Learners make predictions about a book based on its cover, title, and a brief flip through the pages. They listen to an explanation of cause and...

A Reading Adventure pack explores the busy life of bees. After reading a fiction and nonfiction text, scholars complete three hands-on activities. Participants invent a robot that can do the work of bees, cheers to hardworking bees with...

Candace Fleming's award winning Ben Franklin's Almanac is the anchor text for a classroom guide that provides teachers with a cache of pre, during, and post-reading activities.

Here are three guided reading lesson plan templates; each designed to meet the needs of a specific level of readers. Levels in focus are emergent, early, and transitional readers. Additionally, prompts to support your small group...

After listening to From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons, learners take a walk around their school looking for plants. They use digital cameras to photograph the plants, then construct a class book which has the identities of the plants,...

Meant to be used as part of a discussion of the book We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen, this resource takes your class on its own adventure, slide by slide. It is a great way to review the main points of the book, practice...

Schools in the 1950s and 60s looked very different from the schools we know today. An educator's guide explores the civil rights movement and, specifically, the process of integrating schools. Questions cover key themes in the novel and...

Teach children that just because something is old, doesn't mean you have to throw it away with a reading of Joseph Had a Little Overcoat by Simms Taback. Engaging children with an arts and crafts activity in which they patch the...

What lengths will one go to for love? Louis, a swan in The Trumpet of The Swan, struggles to gain the attentions of a girl because he cannot trumpet. Thankfully, his father creates a plan that may work. Scholars discover Louis's attempts...

Eliminate the hard work of creating an entire literature unit with this reading guide for the novel Sarah, Plain and Tall. From background information about the author and her motivation for writing the story to...

Help learners find the most important information in a text with a lesson on summarizing. As kids read through a passage about Johannes Gutenberg, they summarize small excerpts, put events in sequential order, and respond to two longer...

Learners observe and demonstrate a variety of strategies for reading with expression. They listen to the teacher read parts of the book "Owen" by Kevin Henke with and without expression and discuss the differences. In pairs, students...

It's time for your scholars to become book reviewers! Start with a fun review of foods: are they good or gross? Learners apply these evaluation techniques to books, recording their thoughts on large pieces of butcher paper. Simply have...

Review parts of speech, verb tense, The Giver by Lowis Lowery, the mechanics of writing, and vocabulary. This Jeopardy-style game is perfect for any 4th or 5th grade class having read the book The Giver and in need of language arts...

Budding novelists work on character development by relating to the characters in their stories. They imagine their own hopes and dreams and recall those of characters from books they've read. Learners also consider struggles the...

Can you find the themes from Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea in other books? What about picture books? Compare the novel to a picture book with a lesson about making predictions and finding textual evidence.

Celebrate International Children's Book Day using this resource. Learners complete activities, such as reading a passage, sequencing, unscrambling sentences, writing questions, conducting surveys, and writing. Students complete twelve...

Silly journal and essay prompts may be fun to write, but they don't model the kind of writing needed for college papers and standardized tests. The 15th part in a series of 24 covers the concept of reading to write—during and after...

Third graders continue to practice the close reading skills of capturing the gist and reading again for important details in the sixth instructional activity in a larger unit. This is a great beginning-of-the-year unit for establishing...